If there's one thing I'm fairly good at, it's learning from my mistakes.
Stop laughing. Okay, please? I'm trying to live gracefully here. I'm trying to figure out how. The collective as a commune does not work. There are too many egos and not enough boundaries and zero privacy. We were so busy holding each other up we didn't see we were holding each other down. They spent so much time watching me that they had none left to spend on themselves and when PJ moved out abruptly this week I guess it was confirmation that by taking apart what we built they all might have a chance. That if we all remain here nothing is ever going to change.
I don't need a safety net THAT big. The one I have works just fine.
We bought a house shortly after New Years. A beautiful little new house up in the woods. Far off the beaten path but oddly closer to everything we need to get to. No longer will I have to go venture down the big scary highway for over an hour to grocery shop. No longer will I have to ask four times what they said instead of the usual two because the wind is roaring in my ears.
There's no private beach. No driver. No support network in the new house. It's all ours and we'll either finish ourselves off or...thrive, maybe. Only Ben, Lochlan, the children and myself will live there.
Caleb will be fine, I hope. I realize I may have broken his heart along with his patience but it was necessary. The pressure he was putting on me was so tremendous and so I just kept planning and planning and not telling him anything and then I chickened out altogether and told him in front of the facilitator as we sat for our quarterly meeting as a blended family.
The look on his face.
Further confirmation that this is the right step.
The children are very excited. And we don't need to live within Caleb's means. We did not earn them.
(Can you tell I'm inwardly freaking the fuck out over his reaction? Or lack of one? I couldn't tell him or he would have prevented me from leaving and I have to go. I can't stay here anymore. He's crushing me.)
We want normalcy.
Well, as much normalcy as a nuclear polyandrous family can have, that is. Lochlan is very happy. He's so freaking happy. There's a lot of talk that he did his magical brainwashing and I'm just a puppet. This is not true. It just isn't so stop. You're going to hear different all through this but it isn't him, it's me.
I'm going to escape the Devil with twenty days to spare.
I'm going to keep looking after my boys, no matter what, just more like in the way we used to when I had the castle. If they don't visit me every single day there will be hell to pay, but it isn't anything like the hell we're in right now.
Batman and his amazing team of miracle workers helped orchestrate this. I do apologize for pretending we were on the outs but I had to in order to keep Caleb in the dark. At no time did I choose Caleb over Batman. Neither one is mine to keep but at least Batman has marginally more self-control and a better view of the big picture.
Caleb has tunnel vision and at the end of the tunnel is me.
I'm not his vision, for fucks sakes and I play him thinking there will be no repercussions. There are always repercussions. I just don't know what they are yet but as bad as things will be with him, they will be better for everyone else.
It'll work. You'll see.
Swim out on a sea of faces,
The tide of the human races,
An answer now is what I need.
See it in a new sun rising
See it break on your horizon
Oh, come on love, stay with me